The District Sleeps
by littlehibou
Summary: Tsubasa is singing Let It Go. Kyouya is howling at the moon. Ryuga rips his pants sliding down a tree, and in the dark they find each other. Somehow in the middle of the chaos, the district sleeps.


Hello everyone! Let's play a game - can you guess my identity?! I was here on FFN before, but I left for a long time. If you can guess who I was then you can have a cookie!

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight is accredited to the Postal Service. I changed up the lyrics near the end OTL

Set after Fury. Or whatever the season before ZG is called.

* * *

Leaves were nice, Tsubasa thought drearily, watching them float down eerily in the night sky. It had never occurred to him that maybe leaves continued to fall at night even when nobody was around to see them.

Well, he guessed somebody was around now.

He stumbled on a rock and realised he had caught himself falling asleep. That was no good. What could keep him awake?

_Smeared black ink..._

_Your palms are sweaty,_

_and I'm barely listening_

He stopped in the middle of the chorus of a song (loudly belted out); interrupted by a howl. There were wolves here?

He should turn back.

But he heard a scream.

Tsubasa went through the trees, he should really turn back, but there was that instinct again, the one that scared him at times - he bolted through the trees, and was afraid.

In a clearing he was met with shining eyes (he should really turn back), sets of gold and sets of blue; and he snapped Eagle into the launcher, barely feeling, and his eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw:

Ryuga half-up a tree, Kyouya in the open with his teeth bared (he should have turned back so, so long ago), hackles raised like a dog.

_And I'm barely listening to your last demands_

_Staring at the asphalt,_

_Wondering what's buried underneath_

_Where I am_

Tsubasa noticed then that the metal of Eagle had bit into his palm, drawing blood across the shiny steel, already drying in the cold night. The numbness that pervaded his every movement, as of late, apparently extended to his hands. He (almost-sheepishly) put the beyblade back in its carry-case, stuck his hands in his pocket (a fierce and broken beast hiding its wounds).

It was Kyouya who broke that fragile and awkward silence.

_Where I am_

"Were you singing? Who was singing?"

"I was", he said without thinking, stupid.

"I hate that song", growled Ryuga from the tree.

_Where I am_

"It's not a bad song!"

"Whoever told you that Let It Go was not a bad song?!" demanded Kyouya.

"I was just trying to stay awake", he muttered, (almost) sheepish once again.

"Awake for what? It's the middle of the night."

Suddenly on guard; and he felt his muscles rise into tension like clouds on the horizon (curse them, clouds); and he blurted, "I heard howling. I think there are wolves out here."

"Th-there are no wolves, that's just plain idiotic", stammered Kyouya. Was he blushing?

"It was this moron over here", Ryuga said, jerking a thumb at the former, "up on that big rock like he's some kinda Lion King or something."

Confused in his sleepiness, Tsubasa said, "Lions don't howl."

(An eye-roll from he of the tree.)

"Why were you howling then, Kyouya?"

"It - I - well...what was Ryuga doing out here?" Kyouya sputtered, an accusing finger jabbed in the direction of the eye-roller.

Undignified but deadpan, Ryuga slid down the tree trunk using only his legs.

_I'll wear my badge..._

_A vinyl sticker with big block letter, adhered to my chest_

_Tell your new friends _

_I am a visitor here..._

"For your information, I needed a place to sleep", he answered flatly. "Money doesn't grow on trees."

"You apparently do", snickered Kyouya.

"So what, you want to make a big deal out of it?" (A twitch towards his wrist and its hidden dragon.)

"Don't you have like a family or something? I mean, I don't see why, but there's probably someone missing you."

"Maybe I do, and maybe they're not", snapped Ryuga (that holster inches away from opening), and Tsubasa noticed how lean he had grown since their last encounter.

_I am not permanent_

_And the only thing keeping me dry is_

_Where I am,_

_Where I am_

Words on the tip of Kyouya's tongue were cut off by the dragon's glare.

"Don't ask me anything else about it. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore."

"What about you?" Kyouya said, immediately turning to Tsubasa (a scapegoat, as always) - "Why are you here?"

"I could ask you the same thing", he answered.

"I'm on my way home", he said self-righteously; "The trail through the trees cuts straight from the stadium. It's a shortcut. Your turn."

His turn.

"I'm working", he answered. Working: a loose term.

"Working, huh. Where?"

"Osaka."

"Osaka?!" demanded Ryuga, looking up now, formerly occupied with the bits of bark stuck in his clothing - "Osaka is hours from here by bus! Did you run away?"

Run away. Run away from work, the little delinquent that he was.

_Where I am_

There was not space to breathe. There was nothing familiar. He could not hear his heartbeat in the midst of all the traffic; he was a nobody; a lonesome soul - and he had come to find that there was nothing poetic about it.

"You _ran away?!_" demanded Kyouya. Little lion couldn't comprehend running away, and Tsubasa suspected he'd left the nest by a choice not his own. "Why would you do that? That's stupid!"

"Couldn't breathe", he muttered.

For a moment, the world went hazy, and he could hear them talking in the air around him, but forgot their words as soon as he heard them.

_You seem so out of context_

_In this gaudy apartment complex_

Then a hand was gripping his jacket. "Steady now. You're falling asleep on your feet", Ryuga said gruffly. Tsubasa pushed away from him (not scared, but pride-hurt), stumbled across the leaves.

"Most people walk out here to help them go to sleep but it looks like you've got that down", said Kyouya, with a smirk that comes with years of practice (too many years on your own).

"I don't wanna sleep", he mumbled, along with the beginning bars of Do You Want To Build a Snowman.

"No more singing", said Kyouya, clapping his hands over his ears, at the same time as Ryuga asked, "Why?" (Yes, why; why is a good question for everything.)

_A stranger with your door key_

_Explaining that I'm just visiting_

_I am finally seeing_

_Why I was the one worth leaving_

"Why?" he repeated, shaking Tsubasa awake.

"I don't want to wake up in another strange place (alone like usual)", he answered, sleep being a truth machine.

He expected a huff and a sigh, an eye roll. Ryuga gave him all three. Kyouya handed him a door key. He could not comprehend it.

"I've got a couch", Kyouya said grumpily, "and I don't happen to be using it right now."

"Why..."

"Your hand is bleeding", Kyouya answered, changing the subject immediately.

_I was the one worth leaving_

Somehow, he stumbled along. Leaves were so nice.

And again he woke in the morning, immediate dread filling him at the sight of another cheesy couch with stained pillows (no pillows actually), loneliness damp and heavy in the air around him, weighing him down. It would be another one of those mornings where he didn't get up.

His legs were asleep.

_The district slept alone last night,_

_after the malls turned out their lights_

_And sent the autos swerving into the loneliest evening_

_I was the one worth leaving. _

Tsubasa cast his eyes downwards and saw that the sleepiness was due to Kyouya's heavy head on his legs; the tickling from his fellow blader's unruly ponytail. Kyouya knelt on the floor, his top half slouched over the couch.

Across the room, Ryuga stood at the window, blocking the watery light.

He turned to Tsubasa, his eyes dead serious (dead-weary). "I guess I'll be leaving now. Don't bother looking in the fridge, there's only lemons."

Tsubasa nodded, the strength suddenly found to pull himself aright.

"A word of free criticism before I go", Ryuga said sternly, adapting what Tsubasa had come to recognise as his Monologue Face.

"Ok, go on then." Normally he would not accept being chastised. But he didn't have the strength to argue.

"Stop running", he answered accusingly. "If you have something to run away from, it's worth staying for. If it's not worth staying for, you need to find something to run away to. You're not always gonna encounter a guy with a couch in the middle of wherever you end up. You're not always gonna have someone to make you get up in the mornings when your chest feels heacy."

"You know what it feels like?"

"Maybe I've been there", he muttered roughly. He brushed past, and Tsubasa noticed something.

"Empty", he said, pointing to Ryuga's wrist holster. "Your beyblade. Where is it?"

"In good hands. Better hands than mine", he answered cryptically. That smirk (almost-smile), from too many years alone. "No more questions, loser." A half-hearted insult; a reminder of days long past.

Tsubasa did not watch him go. He'd learned a while back that watching made the weight worse.

_I was the one worth leaving_

He looked down towards the opposite end of the couch. Kyouya was snoring. Today he was not a lion or a wolf but a boy. A boy who didn't know what it was like to run into oblivion.

Tsubasa stood and stretched his tingling legs. He took an apple from his pack and left it on the counter, a form of payment for a good night's sleep (a good morning's wakening).

It was time to run back towards home.


End file.
